Advanced Optics and Photonics Laboratory, School of Science and Technology, Nottingham Trent University, UK

Recent advancements in nanofabrications, characterisations, and computer modelling have allowed the generation of arrays of engineered nanoparticles, called meta-surfaces, that extraordinarily control light characteristics. They can reproduce the functions of bulky geometrical optics such as lenses, mirrors or filters. Alongside that, occasionally, metasurfaces can offer some functionalities, such as tunability, that are not achievable by geometrical optics. Such advances have led to revolutionary applications in several fields, including but not limited to meta-lenses, polarisation converters, nano-sensors, and holograms. In this talk, I will briefly review the research activities of the Advanced Optics and Photonics Group at Nottingham Trent University on light-matter manipulation for real-life applications. I will discuss how engineering metallic, dielectric, and semiconductor nanoparticles enable us to control the light intensity, frequency, and propagation direction. I will demonstrate how such controls can help us to generate optical nano-switches with switching time faster than the human eye’s response. Also, I will explain how we can engineer nanoparticles to convert images from the near-infrared region, invisible to human eyes, to the visible region. Finally, I will show our latest results on how nanostructures can help monitor individual proteins over time. These are a few examples, among many other technologies that are being developed in the community, of why many people consider photonics at the heart of cutting-edge technologies in the 21st century.

Biography:

Mohsen Rahmani is a professor of optics and photonics and the leader of the advanced optics and Photonics laboratory at Nottingham Trent University (NTU), in the UK. He obtained his PhD from the National University of Singapore in 2013, followed by a postdoc fellowship at Imperial College London and the Australian Research Council Early Career Fellowship at the Australian National University. In 2020, he joined NTU via the Royal Society Wolfson Fellowship. Shortly after moving to the UK, he was also awarded the UK Research and Innovation Future Leaders Fellowship. Recently, he has secured an ERC Consolidator Grant. His research activities span over light-matter interactions with nanometre-scale particles for applications in flat optics, near-infrared imaging, bio-sensing, and reconfigurable optics. He has received several prestigious awards and prizes, including the Australian Eureka Prize (Australian Oscar of Science), the Early Career Medal from the International Union of Pure and Applied Physics, and the Australian Optical Society Geoff Opat Award. Professor Rahmani has delivered 40+ invited talks, seminars and keynotes at international conferences and has published more than 80 peer-reviewed journal papers (H-index=43). He is the past chair of the IEEE Nanotechnology Chapter across the UK and Ireland section (2021-2023) and a distinguished lecturer for the IEEE Nanotechnology Council 2024-2025.

Address:South Africa